plains, and lifts to the skies its towers and steeples, as if the better to guard its sandy bay.

Thanks to the direct route which now joins Irun and St. Sebastian, the diligence brings you, in two hours, to the capital of Guipuzcoa. Enter the Parador Real, the best hotel of the city; and, if you are a naturalist, ask for a room behind, large as a ball-room, lighted by a lofty window, which allows you to see the rock of St. Clara and the mouth of the bay. Place your microscope, your pencils, your brushes on a solid table, which your hostess will bring you with alacrity; distribute your vases and saucers on the large sideboard which fills an entire side of the apartment; then, sure of having plenty of light and space for your labours, cast your eye south and north, and climb the zigzag footpaths of Mount Orgullo. You will look quite over the height, turn aside to the batteries which protect the entrance of the bay, and admire the wild beauty of the English cemetery, where, in the midst of savage rocks, the tombs of a few officers, killed in the war of Don Carlos, are seen to rise you will lastly reach the donjons of Castillo, and your eye will embrace in one survey St. Sebastian and all its environs.

An amphitheatre of hills, rising sufficiently high to merit the name of mountains, bends before you in a semicircle, and projects into the sea; to the left, the peak and steeps of Mount Ulia; and to the right, the lighthouse and rocks of Mount Igueldo. A low and narrow tongue of land detaches itself from the continent, divides in two almost equal parts this basin of three quarters of a league in size, and enlarges a little on reaching Mount Orgullo. It is on this that St. Sebastian is built. To the east, at the base of the city-ramparts, you see the mouth of the Urumea, which the eye follows in its tortuous course till it disappears in a valley, and bends away on the side of Astigaraga. The roads, properly so called, are on the other side. Protected by the projecting rocks of Mount Orgullo, by the islet of Santa Clara, and the chain of cliffs which connect it with Mount Igueldo, this harbour presents to the sea nothing but a narrow opening. A magnificent beach surrounds it with a semicircle of fine sand, only interrupted by the rocky point on

which rose, before the last wars, the chapel of Antigua. This beach, passing into the sea by an almost insensible descent, is every summer the rendezvous of numerous bathers, who come from all parts of Spain to seek here health or amusement. The port lies immediately at the base of Mount Orgullo, completely sheltered on all sides, and covered, even on the side of the roads, by four jetties, which mutually protect one another.

As in the past, so now St. Sebastian is one of the principal centres of the Basque population. One can understand with what interest we studied this remarkable race, which stands unrelated to the other European nations, and whose origin is one of the most difficult problems which ethnology has attempted to solve. One would not deserve the title of naturalist, who, abandoned to the study of the lower animals, should neglect that of the human race, or fail in attaching the highest importance to whatever could cast light on the history of its innumerable varieties.

The Biscayans, called by different authors Cantabres, Euskarians, Euskaldunes, give themselves the name of Euskaldunac, which signifies a people with cunning hands. They speak a language without analogy to European dialects, the Euskara language. Distinct from all neighbouring populations in physical characteristics, in manners, and in institutions, they differed from them formerly in their traditions and religious beliefs. The ancient Euskarian fables speak (say some authors) of the destruction of a primitive world, from which only a few escaped, "rare as the olives which rest on the boughs after harvest, or the grapes which hang when the vintage is over." Of this small number one was Aïtor, the ancestor of the Euskaldunacs. Withdrawing with his companion into an inaccessible grotto, Aïtor lived for a year, with the spectacle constantly present to him of fire and water contending for the mastery. Struck with terror, he became oblivious of everything communicated to him by his forefathers respecting the past history of the world, down even to their language: he accordingly invented a new one. The sons of Aïtor, having descended into the plains, spread rapidly and formed powerful nations; but they always

faithfully preserved the language and religion of the "father of high places, the ancestor of the mountains." Polytheism, in what it has of grossness and materialism, has been always unknown among the Euskarians. This people adored a supreme being, creator and conserver of worlds, the Jas-onGoïcoa, or "Lord from on high;" they began and ended the day with prayer to him; they offered to him sacrifices of the fruits of the earth through the medium of the aged of the tribes; but they reared to him no temple. Their religious ceremonies, which were always very simple, took place at certain epochs, determined by aspects of the skies, and were performed under the same oak where those old men who had become Chiefs by privilege of age rendered justice and ruled the affairs of the nation. The Biscayans believed in the immortality of the soul, and in a state of future rewards and punishments. In their views, a natural death was nothing but a long sleep; and the tomb was called "the couch of long repose."

A people whose religion had been always spiritual were prepared for embracing Christianity with facility. The Biscayans make even pretensions to being the first Christian people. Their national traditions easily coincided with the new belief. The Euskarians have, so to say, confiscated for their own use the claims asserted by the other Spanish peoples on the antiquity of their own race. These have connected themselves with the immediate descendants of Noah, without, however, exactly agreeing on the epoch when these first colonies arrived in Spain. Mariana, Joseph Morat, and others, had adopted the version given by Alphonso Tostal in his "Legenda Pendolada," written in 1073. According to them, Tubal, son of Japheth, had come quite directly to settle in the western extremity of Europe, a hundred and thirty-one years after the deluge; and this primitive stock, at a later period, covered with its colonies Europe, the northern coasts of Africa, and even a portion of Asia. Other writers, such as Bochart, Ponce de Leon, &c., consider that the son of Japheth, marching from east to west, had commenced by peopling the central parts of Europe, and did not arrive in Spain till five hundred and thirty-five years

after the deluge, under the conduct of Tarsis, cousin-german to Tubal. These two versions, attacked and maintained with great vivacity, divided philosophers. Passages were drawn by both sides from holy writ in behalf of their views. The ecclesiastical tribunals, called in to decide the matter, took at least a tolerably wise part in the controversy. They decided that the two opinions were equally probable, but that only one of them could be true. This judgment became thenceforth an article of faith; and up to the end of last century, it was not deemed prudent for a Spanish author to recognise any other chief of the race than Tubal or Tarsis: had he done so, the Inquisition would have soon called him to account for his heresy.

The Biscayans, who consider themselves as the sole representatives of the ancient Iberian populations, have not failed to accept the results of this controversy. A sort of Christian mythology replaced with them the vague traditions of former times. Aitor became Noah. He was the father of the Euskarians; from which it follows that they are the progenitors of all the other nations. Spain, in particular, was directly peopled by the companions of Tubal or Tarsis, whose descendants have covered at least the whole of Europe. Is, then, the Euskarian language very certainly that spoken by Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, as the vulgar opinion affirms? That is at least possible; for Noah could have received it by tradition, aud, in that case, would transmit it to his descendants. It is true that these, having dared to brave the Most High in building Babel, were struck with confusion, and that seventy-two languages suddenly took the place of the one language which they received from their fathers; but Scripture does not say in what year the pride of men drew down upon them this punishment. It would not then be impossible that the colony called to people Europe and Spain had parted before this epoch. It would thus carry with it the dialect spoken from the first ages of the world; and hence the popular beliefs might well express the actual truth. In any case, however, the Euskarian language, as they say, is infinitely superior to all known dialects as to its "priority," its " universality," its "inexhaustibleness," its "natural

ness," its "inflexions," its "shades of meaning," and "verbal mechanism :" it includes within itself more roots than would suffice for the formation of the seventy-two languages born at the foot of the Babylonish tower. No language, therefore, approaches so near as it does to that revealed to Adam by the Eternal Father. Inspired by God, the Euskarian language is as natural to the human race as cooing to the dove, barking to the dog, and bellowing to the bull. Every man when he begins to prattle speaks Basque. Papa, titi, mama-these infantine syllables which one finds among all languages-are the purest Euskarian, and mean eat, nipple, suckle." This language, having its roots in the nature of things, is enough to enable us to find the origin of all the arts and of all the sciences.

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Apart, however, from what is absurd and exaggerated in the linguistic pretensions of the Basques, it must not the less be acknowledged that their language is truly remarkable, and presents quite peculiar characters. W. Von Humboldt thinks that it cannot be classed along with any Indo-Germanic dialect. It is among others entirely distinct from the Celtic tongues. The only languages to which, according to Humboldt, it bears any affinity, are some American dialects. On the other hand, the Abbé D'Hiarce, from a vocabulary brought by Peron, from Van-Diemen's Land, has pointed out several words which he assures us are rigorously Basque. It is rather strange that it should be necessary to seek so far off for the only analogies which this idiom bears to known languages. It is, besides, almost impossible for strangers to learn the Biscayan language. A few of the grammatical theorems of the Abbé D'Hiarce will give some idea of the difficulty. In Basque, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, change into verbs, and the verbs are metamorphosed into nouns and adjectives. Prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections, the characters even of the alphabet, are declined like nouns or adjectives, and conjugated like verbs. Every noun has six nominatives, and twelve different cases; adjectives mount as high as twenty cases. The noun often changes according to the state of being of the thing which it serves to designate. These few facts from our author will suffice, we